Good morning dads, I hope today brings you some quality time with those most important to you.
I've used this forum for support, mainly reading others stories, sometimes adding my own and it's genuinely been of enormous help to me. One thing that I have spotted time and time again is the understandable, but quite debilitating amount of anger and resentment a great many of us have with our ex partners (and often with CAFCAS, the courts, our ex partners new partner....)
It stands to reason right? We are generally here because of them, whatever the ultimate truth of the matter we feel betrayed, let down, like our lives were taken away from us.
Far too often, it seems from my fellow dad's stories, that resentment is stopping us being able to move on with our lives, making it harder to be the best parent we can be, and being unhappy. It also seems that the things we believe are putting us in those situations are things we cannot change.
I wanted to recommend this book, "The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage", and also Stoic philosophy in general, as a way of dealing with our lives in the shape they are, rather than the shape we may want them to be.
Yeah it sounds big, maybe the sort of thing you don't look at normally, I even said "Philosophy". But without a major mindset change, what has happened to us will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Affecting relationships with our children, new partners, our ex partners, friends and family.
This obstacle we have encountered isn't the end. It can be a new opportunity for us to flourish, to be better parents, happier people. We have control over how we react, what we do moving forward, what parts of our lives we pick up, dust down, rebuild and move forward with.
This short passage pretty much sums up the attitude I believe can help us in the place we find ourselves in.
"Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference"
I'm not there yet, I haven't reached some serendipitous plane of existence where I love all my fellow human beings, especially not my ex wife who has and continues to take my mental energy, my money and deny me fair access to my children. But I have accepted the situation I find myself in. I cannot change most of it. But I can change some, a meaningful amount. And I am ploughing all of my energy into that, rather than hating anyone.
I believe this is helpful for all of us and I hope some of you are able to give it a try. I'd be interested to see what you think.
I've used this forum for support, mainly reading others stories, sometimes adding my own and it's genuinely been of enormous help to me. One thing that I have spotted time and time again is the understandable, but quite debilitating amount of anger and resentment a great many of us have with our ex partners (and often with CAFCAS, the courts, our ex partners new partner....)
It stands to reason right? We are generally here because of them, whatever the ultimate truth of the matter we feel betrayed, let down, like our lives were taken away from us.
Far too often, it seems from my fellow dad's stories, that resentment is stopping us being able to move on with our lives, making it harder to be the best parent we can be, and being unhappy. It also seems that the things we believe are putting us in those situations are things we cannot change.
I wanted to recommend this book, "The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage", and also Stoic philosophy in general, as a way of dealing with our lives in the shape they are, rather than the shape we may want them to be.
Yeah it sounds big, maybe the sort of thing you don't look at normally, I even said "Philosophy". But without a major mindset change, what has happened to us will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Affecting relationships with our children, new partners, our ex partners, friends and family.
This obstacle we have encountered isn't the end. It can be a new opportunity for us to flourish, to be better parents, happier people. We have control over how we react, what we do moving forward, what parts of our lives we pick up, dust down, rebuild and move forward with.
This short passage pretty much sums up the attitude I believe can help us in the place we find ourselves in.
"Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference"
I'm not there yet, I haven't reached some serendipitous plane of existence where I love all my fellow human beings, especially not my ex wife who has and continues to take my mental energy, my money and deny me fair access to my children. But I have accepted the situation I find myself in. I cannot change most of it. But I can change some, a meaningful amount. And I am ploughing all of my energy into that, rather than hating anyone.
I believe this is helpful for all of us and I hope some of you are able to give it a try. I'd be interested to see what you think.
Took me a while, I haven't had a day off since covid started! I'll write up a new story end to end for the other part of the forum as well !